Health Care

Let’s Stop Paying for Unwanted Treatment at Life’s End

In 2002, an elderly client of Compassion & Choices , Margaret Furlong, went to the hospital armed with her advance directive, clearly stating she did not want elaborate, life-extending treatment. The hospital delivered those treatments anyway. She spent ten miserable days in the ICU, tethered...

GOP Would Cut Health Insurance for 1.7 Million Kids

Having grown up in a family that could not afford health care, I know how difficult it can be to go to a doctor when you need one. That's one of the reasons I worked on health insurance reform. No person in the United States should go without care when they need it. I remember an afternoon in...

Those first few days are critical...

In the first days following my son’s birth, a lactation specialist visited me in the hospital no fewer than five times. I was a confident, mature woman with a lot of life experience but the small bumps in the road to breastfeeding felt insurmountable. The empathetic, knowledgeable help I received...

Affordable Care Act Bringing Down Premium Costs

Most of us can figure out ways to cutback on our energy consumption to reduce our expenditures at the gas pump but cutting back on health care is a bit trickier. We can’t very well stop our kids from getting sick and even if we could, it wouldn’t impact our premiums – insurers would just pocket the savings. But that’s about to change.